Old Hand’s Babylonian Voyage-The Sermon

The voice hissed from the shadows. I turned to see a toothless hag in fish-net hose and leather thong clutching a length of chain in her skeletal hand.

“How ’bout I clap ye in virtual irons and tickle yer bum with me E-Lash?” she leered. “Just like the real thing.”

“Er, no thanks,” I said and quickened my pace.

As I walked through the lurid, labyrinthine back-alleys of cyberspace, I beheld woeful scenes of hunger and vice.

It was Sunday and, as a pious man, McWhirr had given me leave to knock about on my own; hoping, for the good of my soul, I might attend the sacred service to our lord.

I passed a low dive with a weathered sign that bore the name: Bucket of Spam. The carved, cedar chisel marks suggested its date of manufacture to be (roughly) early 21th century.

Below this it said: We have WI-fi.

I could see, through the fogged window, sleazy spam-bots lit by the eerie blue glow of duck-taped lap-tops inside. I went on.

At last, I arrived at the ancient stone church. An inscription on the facade said something about a guy named Swedenborg. Clear voices sounded through the ancient, stone walls:

“By the Rivers of Babylon…”

I pushed open the heavy oak door and found a pew. The congregation fell silent. A portly preacher in a plaid suit and brown toupee ascended the pulpit and solemnly spoke with the stentorian delivery of Orson Wells:

“And the lord spake unto Noah: I shall makeit rain for 40 days and 40 nights.”

He looked up from the good book and continued in a confiding tone: “And here shipmates, we find already deeper truths than was ever sounded by our learned interpreters of holy texts-aye it comes from the lips of the almighty Himself. And what water are we speaking of here? Is it the water that flows from the reeking taps of the Babylonian waterworks?”

“No!” responded the pious congregation.

“Is it the water of sewers that carry Babylon’s foul waste into the vast oceans of the globe?”

At each interrogatory his voice grew urgent.

“Is it the rain that nourishes our genetically modified corn?”

“No Suh!” responded a dread-locked harpooneer.

“Is it the water which rose ever higher to make Babylon a busy, working port?”

“Make it plain!”

“No-o, it is another kind of rain of which I speak,” he warmed to his theme like a southern preacher:

“It is the flood of materialist greed which immerses ma-AN-kind in self-love and se-ELF-ish desires. He wishesON-ly for con-firm-A-shun of his vile ways through sensory DAY-ta and the false gods of materialist SCI-ence. He EE-vun denies divine kn-OW-ledge and the possa-BIL-ity of an-GEL-ic per-CEP-SHUN.” He banged the pulpit with his meaty fist at each accented syllable. “This is the da-AY-luge that engulfs Babylon today: a flood of kn-OW-ledge that is comp-LETE-ly de-VOID of CHAR-IT-Y!”

The last words resonated with a low rumble that seemed to rise from beneath the worn flagstones of the church. The heavy arches over the altar swayed wildly and collapsed into dust with a thunderous roar. From somewhere in the distance came the mournful wail of sirens. A speaker sputtered and blared:

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George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is now Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society (cnms.berkeley.edu).